Yerr. So last night/this morning I had a dream. It was very... strange, as dreams tend to be I guess. Like trying to hold a fine sand in your hands, my memory of the entire sequence has slowly slipped my grasp, but I do remember one distinct part.

I'm standing in front of a mirror, and I've just taken a nice shower. I'm standing real close to it, close enough to see each strand of hair. It looks like each hair is a strange sort of dreadlock, almost like a fern leaf. Whatever. I'm also wearing a hat. It's a mixture of top hat, bowler, and cowboy.

Nadia is behind me, and she says "Why are you wearing a beanie?" I look back in the mirror, thinking, wtf, that's not a beanie, and now the hat is around my neck, with my head up through the top of the hat. The weird part was that my neck was the normal length through/above the hat, so I looked like a giraffe of sorts. The hat still felt like it was on my head.

I shared it with Nadia on the way to work today and she nearly drove us off the road in laughter. (protip: don't tell jokes to a driver who's knees get weak when they laugh, especially when you're in the car with them.)

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I've recently added a bunch of new images to my Melbourne collection, go take a look!



Full screen sitback is pretty sweet way to expeeeerience them too

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I've played a bunch of new games recently.

Dirt 2 is one slick production. The driving physics take a while to get used to though, especially since I'm used to arcade racers. The licenced driver voices also get reaaaally old after a while, but being able to choose 'captain danger' from a list of nicknames is kinda funny for a few minutes (they'll say things like 'HEY... [captain danger] ...nice race just now!')

Overall though, it's pretty fun. VERY satisfying to nail a race/course that you've been screwing up for the last 20 minutes

Modern Warfare 2 is a tricky one. While the single player is balls to the wall action, I finished it in around four and half hours. That in itself isn't such a big deal, but the story, JEEEZUS, the story is bonkers. As in crazy. And not crazy as in good, crazy as in fucking crazy. As in, bad. The game has 'moments' that are great... but taken as a whole, it's like you just watched a really bad disjointed action movie. But like I said, it's action all the way, so when you're playing it, as far as gameplay goes, it doesn't matter all that much.

The multiplayer feels like an evolution of the last game, which, if you enjoyed it, is a good thing. Like before, a lot of the weapons will be borderline useless unless you play in Hardcore, and there is that element of grinding to get the next unlock. The level design is also a lot more open, with all but one of them being well designed.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, the first DLC for Borderlands is pretty freakin' sweet. The same way The Lost and the Damned condensed all the good of GTAIV minus the boring bits, Zombie Island does the same for, err, Borderlands. If you enjoyed Borderlands, you'll love it; it's a no-brainer (hnyuk hnyuk hnyuk!)

Somewhere amongst all that I also downloaded The Ballad of Gay Tony, the second episode for GTAIV. So far it's pretty good, but it hasn't sucked me in like TLATD did, so I'm not that far into it.

As of Nov 19 ~ 1pm, absolutely nothing! My site is back online

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(previous update below)

Short answer: my site went down.

Long answer: my site went down because I borrowed my mum's credit card to pay for it (back before I had my own.) In the time since then mum forgot all about it, so when they charged her card she disputed it and they suspended my site. I'm working that problem out, but my site will remain down until it's sorted out.

The thing that really sucks though, is that with this new fancy journal skins one-click install that dA gave us, the images are meant to be hosted by dA. So even though my site has gone down, it shouldn't have mattered. To add insult to injury, I can't even edit the skin to force it point to the files that are still on dA's servers (if you check the demo journal for the vintage skin, you'll see all the images are hosted on dA's servers - but if you install it yourself, it points to my site. grr!)

I've got no idea when my site will be back up. Hopefully in the next few days. But what you guys can do in the meantime if you haven't yet switched to another skin () is replace the image paths in the CSS to point to dA.

body.jpg [link]
top_right.jpg [link]
man.jpg [link]
photo.png [link]
footer.png [link]
tab.gif [link]

Edit a journal, go to the Options tab, and in the CSS box, look for the file names I've put in bold above. Swap the links with the ones I have above, and the skin will magically work again

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Sorry for not being around much lately, probably worth another journal to talk about that

What's been going on with you all?

Nadia's parents own a furniture store, and lately I've been helping them out a bit. Unloading trucks, putting stuff together, loading trucks etc.

Yesterday I built three beds and a bunk bed. As I was putting together the bunk bed I got to the stage where I was basically done, all I needed were the slats. I found the box, opened it up and recoiled.

They smelled like dick. Or canned salmon.

Gives new meaning to the term 'wood'

It feels weird to write a journal after such a long time of inactivity. Like they say though, it's just like riding a bike (...which I also miss doing.)

My activity here - as I've said to a few people privately - can be very bi-polar. I've always balanced my creative pursuits with other activities (usually video games) and often there are stretches where I throw myself at one over the other. These periods usually align with my mood; during times of stress/etc I'll end up escaping into video games.

And so that's where I've been. Playing games on our 360, COD4 mostly with my friend Andrew. We partner up on Hardcore Team Deathmatch, and lag issues aside, we have an awesome time. Looking forward to MW2

Bought a bunch of XBL Arcade games too, and renewed our subscription to Gamefly. But just like at the peak of my activity here I withdrew, I've gotten to the point now with the videogames that I need to do a little something else. Hence my so-called bi-polar-ish nature.

Anyhow. Now that I'm back I'll be picking up where I left off, and I've also got a few goodies to share that I came up with during my absence. I'll save most of those for later journals, but here's one I'm particularly pleased with:

.stream .tt-a:nth-child(odd):hover .shadow{
   -moz-transform:rotate(-5deg) scale(1.2,1.2)
}
.stream .tt-a:nth-child(even):hover .shadow{
   -moz-transform:rotate(5deg) scale(1.2,1.2)
}

I wont spoil the surprise (well, if you can't tell what it does just by looking at it) - so if you have Firefox 3.5+ and Stylish, plug it in and see what it does to thumbs when you hover them

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And now, a couple of artists I found by browsing the front page set to 'recent':